Finally she broke down. For a good few minutes she’d battled her way through her story, occasionally gulping down tears or pausing to calm her breath. But it was too much. He’d said his farewells to his friends, she explained, not knowing if he’d ever see them again – and now the tears overcame her.

Three years ago, she said, her husband had been living a peaceful life with her in Kent. He was a retired businessman, a doting grandfather, president of the golf union. Then one morning in May 2010 the couple were awoken by the doorbell. Mrs Tappin opened the door to be confronted by two strange men brandishing warrant cards.

The couple were “beyond shocked”. What was going on? What did the US want him for? Surely a magistrate would prevent him being extradited. Or Theresa May, the Home Secretary – she’d stand up for his rights as a British citizen. But no.

Mrs Tappin – a small, delicately featured woman with brisk, silvery hair – spoke with dignity and courage. But she looked pale and fragile. When tears got the better of her, Keith Vaz – the committee’s chairman – reassured her that they would examine her statement fully in written form. The Tappins’ son Neil, beside her, calmly deplored his father’s treatment. He was alone in a cell. He wasn’t even allowed to read. “All he’s got is his himself and his thoughts. Would that happen in this country?”

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What, Britain? Where even Abu Qatada gets to walk his children to school? The Tappins departed. Next before the committee was Dominic Grieve, the Attorney General. In 2009, while in Opposition, Mr Grieve said our extradition laws were “one-sided”; a Tory government would “rewrite” them.

Curiously, Mr Grieve’s views today seem rather less forthright. The US-UK extradition terms weren’t “in the condition in which ideally I would wish them to be,” he admitted – but all the same, it was terribly important to have extradition laws. No one was saying we shouldn’t have extradition laws, retorted Mr Vaz in exasperation. This didn’t stop Mr Grieve making the point for a second time, then a third.

Mr Tappin’s arrest, he conceded, had “caused disquiet” – such lawyerly understatement – but “this may be linked to Mr Tappin’s respectability”. It sounded as if he were saying people cared about Mr Tappin only because he was middle-class. “Applying my mind as a lawyer to these things,” sniffed Mr Grieve, peering down his long, hooked, witch-like nose, “I tend to have to put in some rigour to my approach.” Now it sounded as if he were saying he knew better than us plebs, with our soppy ideas of justice and fairness.

On he droned, in peevish legalese – the language in which people are never people, they’re “individuals”. His favourite terms were “reasonable suspicion” and “probable cause”. He didn’t explain them well; perhaps I can help by using them in a sentence.

I have a reasonable suspicion that the Government won’t act, and the probable cause is it’s terrified of America.